Venus was rich. Really, really obscenely rich. So rich that they routinely paid their own taxes, and the taxes of two other planets without really noticeing the drain. (Saturn and Pluto, two planets that had problems that routinely caused them to not have money: Pluto had no significant population due to small size and isolation, and Saturn because no one with money wanted to live near the Messaih of Silence's resting place).
Venus was a planet of Sorcerers; While the rest of the empire delved into technology, Venus drove into pure sorcery and Magitechnology to a rarified height. Their pure sciences may have been weak, but in their own relm of pure sorcery, they had no equal in skill. Power, perhaps, but never skill.
But mostly what people in the Nine worlds knew was that the people of Venus loved Artists, and elevated, by tradition everything to the relm of art: All manner of crafts, sorceries, martial arts, drama, song, dance; Venusians studied these, not for profit or any especial cause (although they certainly made enough profit off of them) but for the simple sake of beeing good at them. To be able to create art.
It was precisely these things that had influenced the creation of The Super Armor of Venus. Where the Mercurians had delved into cutting edge magiteknology and superscience, mateing entirely new developements together to form a artifact of bleeding edge experimental capabilities, the Venusians simply poured an obsceene amount of money, time and skill into developeing their own allready known techniques into the most perfect form possible.
Unlike science, however, art could not be rushed - not on the planet of Artists, anyway; The Venusians had started early - very early, before even Mercury - and never finished before the fall. Safe behind the mile-thick crystal walls of Magellan Orbital pallace, however, the development team had survived the fall, and work had continued untill the primary test of the Armor's systems had revealed a very big problem and hurled the pallace well out of the solar system.
A very traditional world, the Venusian people were ruled by choice, and universally loved their royal family - the very thought of discarding their heriditary protector, especially in her current incarnation, was blasphemous, and Venus was one of the first worlds to withdraw it's support from the competition once Mercury's armor had been given to someone other than the Mercury Senshi.
Unlike the Mercurians, the Venus Armor had never been intended for anyone other than it's princess, and with her dead, it had violently rejected all other bearers. Unable to address the issue in the last stages of the creation, it's makers had regretfully powered the armor down, and marroned outside the reach of the solar system by their breif flight, been forced to enter stasis due to lack of energy.
This state of affairs had lasted untill the Armor detected a signal from earth that caused it to begin the long, slow process of powering back up: The test bed for it's own systems owned by it's intended mistress was active. The lesser system had, by comparison to it's own abilities, only 40% of it's own power - demonstrably less than that of a Eternal Senshi, but still very, very strong - and could be used only by the princess, as it was attuned to (and powered by) her spirit energy and magic.
Unfortunately, before the Armor could reach earth from it's resting place in deep space, the signal had vanished at the end of Sailor V's carrer, when the Crescent Compact burned itself violently out durring a final showdown with one of the Armor's own developers: Danburite of the dark kingdom, who had possesed some derivitives of that technology himself.
SVA01 had continued to follow the last known position as quickly as it could without actually being powered, but without the energy of the signal to activate it's power systems, and weighed down by the containment systems it had been shackled to by it's creators at shutdown, it was slow going, and only years later did it crash down in a schoolyard lot.
Where the equation promptly changed. From space, even from orbit, the armor had not been able to actually actiavate. What had been runing was more along the lines of an instinct than it's operateing sentience - an instinctive drive to seek out and merge with it's proper mistress.
As it approached, more and more of it's untested powers activated as it used traces of Sailor Venus's powers to begin jumpstarting systems; By the time it crashed to earth, cracking and smashing it's restraints, the 'armor' in the black stasis/design coffin had come to awareness and begun actively looking for it's partner in accordance to it's hidden directives.
The people of Venus had never particularily liked being part of the Silver Millenium (They would much rather have been left alone than get involved in gallactic or even system wide politics), and they especially didn't like their Princess having to play subsurvient bodyguard to the airheaded daughter of the Moon Queen. SAV-01's prime directives were simple: Find Venus. Merge with her (So that it could not be stolen). Don't take any shit from the Moon Queen.
With the restraints off, it proceded to do just that: Locateing her proved to be easy, and as a artifact of high sorcery and magiteknology, teleportation was only one of it's most minor powers. The Sentience of the Armor figured (rightly so) that appearing to anyone and being obvious about this merger would cause some alarm to it's mistress. To prevent that, it simply teleported itself into Aino Minako's Senshi 'pocketspace' and began to flow from there into her body, initiateing the process of fusion as subtly as possible. An afterthought on SAV01's part absorbed the various transformation wands and weapons Minako stored there for ease of use.
Minako leaned on the remains of the temple wall and watched as Ami typed furiously over the comatose boy, and yawned clandestinely as Setsuna feilded questions. The entire affair was too weird for words, first of all and it was makeing her rather dizzy.
(On a sub-spiritual and atomic level, SAV-01 began the process of interfaceing with it's designated owner's mind, causeing a breif disturbance in her equlibrium)
First there was the cute guy (If he was your type. Since 'short, dark haired, obnoxious and dressed like a monster' was a direct conflict with 'tall, silver haired, refined and arrogant' he wasn't Mina's, which, by her mental computation made him safe to date without worrying that he might actually _be_ a monster), with the magical powers who wasn't a monster (Different!), and Haruka and Michi flying off the broom (again. She wondered how they had ever gotten by on their own without having wanted posters all over the city.), and then there was the whole revelation that Mr. Cute-but-not-her-type was Setsuna's father and Ami's -brother-, which made him family of a sort.
And he could fight like...well, actually, she was reserving judgement on that. He had beat the Oh-so-perfect outer Senshi, but that only took power and a tallent for exploiting Uranus's hot head.
So while Rei steamed and looked worried, and Ami typed, and Setsuna tried to not explain more than she should, Minako sat back and just watched the show.
The Sentience of SAV-01, 'Neith' came to full awareness upon completeing the basic linkage with it's princess and immediately began a system check, the first full system test it - she - had ever done, on either itself or it's host.
The Armor's basic composition was a kind of liquid metal; In a few centuries, earth technology might have been able to create something similar with nano-tech. Neith's 'working' body was about as technological as your average jellyfish, with only a few specialized magitek crystals being the exception.
It was, however, biological - a living metal of Venusian origin that the Artisians had changed to their likeing - and in fuseing with Minako's body had confined it's inital phase to simply 'hideing' inside her flesh, slightly out of phase with reality; Unlike the Mercury Armor, this bonding took a few seconds instead of a few hours. Of course, it's full bonding would take much longer, but it's initial phase was over almost immediately.
Secondary parts of 'Neith' were armor plate and weapons that could be easily regenerated by the main body at need - it could also assimilate outside weapons into this suit, as it had done with Mina's Transformation pen, the wreckage of her Crescent Compact, and her Stone Sword - these would be useable immediately, along with some minor enhancement of it's wearer's basic strengths. In order to be fully effective, however, it would have to merge more fully with the princess, in order to provide the reflex and conditioning enhancements it had been designed too.
Neith quickly determined that this would take a bit of work; The princess was currently stuck in a Terran body, which would not do - Terrans were terribly fragile, not enough metals or salts in their bodies, and had no Ki focus to speak off. It allready had some help in fixing that - her Senshi magic had been trying to remedy the situation, but had received several setbacks when she had been ressurected by the Moon Queen's crystal. Within a few days, it should be able to finish that project, and bring the full range of magical abilities it had on file into V's arsenal.
And it was an arsenal. While Neith did provide a substantial boost to Mina's ability to handle Senshi energy - easily topping and more her maximum eternal potential by several times over - it's main advantages were that it allowed for Free-form magic use, createing spells on the fly, and also had a library of techniques on file, from advanced hypermartial arts and sword combat to intricate disguise sorceries that would make one undetectable to even the most sophisticated scanners Mercury ever produced.
One of the sets of techniques on special file was the set that changed costumes; Venus had extensively complained about the dullness of the constant use of only the 'Ultrashort skirt and bows' uniform, and Neith spotted much the same in Minako's Memories in this life: Sailor V had gone to disguise costumes anytime she could, rather than the short skirt.
Neith placed a large number of those on file for later use and got to work, realizeing that with both Mercurians and Pluto in the room, her discovery was only a matter of time..and then Super Sailor V would be makeing the Sceene.
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(Posted Mon, 17 Mar 2003 20:33)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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